I think I can say with out fear of contradiction, that most men
like a little Beaver. And that is particularly true of those that build models.
The DHC-2 Beaver was developed just after WW2 when DeHavilland Canada realized
that they needed to design a rugged bush aircraft of be forced out of business.
The Beaver was the result of that and it was enough of a success to keep the
company solvent for many years.

Though not their first design;
that was the DHC-1 Chipmunk, a very capable primary trainer that saw a great
deal of use, The Beaver led to the much larger DHC-3 Otter and then to the DHC-4
Caribou, a twin engined, medium lift, cargo aircraft. With the exception of the
Chipmunk, probably the largest user of DeHavilland Canada aircraft was the US
Army, which bought prodigious numbers of the Beaver, Otter and Caribou.

All
of these aircraft has excellent STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) capabilities
which made them particularly useful to the Armies that bought the aircraft. That
same ruggedness that was appreciated by Canadian and Alaskan bush pilots was
what attracted the various military forces to want to purchase these aircraft.
All of them have done well in overseas markets and many are still flying.

THE
KIT

It is not surprising that the Airfix kit would represent a
version used by the British Army. Not all Beavers have all those lumps and bumps
on top of the forward fuselage, so if you are doing other Beavers, that needs to
be modified.

The Airfix kit has been around for a while, at least
the mid 1970s and while devoid of gimmicks is still a child of that era with
raised panel lines, a mediocre interior, and oversize parts. My example was in a
lovely light blue plastic and relatively devoid of flash. The transparencies are
quite thick, especially the roof ones, which have large sink marks in them.
Tough to remove, too!

The instructions are very typical of Airfix
of the period, but completely adequate to enable one to build the kit. Part
numbers and paint colors are called out in the building steps, albeit that paint
numbers are Humbrol references. The decals offer two versions; an British Army
aircraft in green and brown camouflage, and a US Army one in white and gloss
olive drab. I didn't use the kit decals as I wasn't doing either version. The
decals themselves are flat and were yellowing so they would have been discarded
anyway. As far as I know, there are no aftermarket decals for this kit. A shame
too, as it was used by so many different countries.

CONSTRUCTION

Naturally, one begins this kit in the cockpit/interior. Thanks
to the thickness of the clear bits, there is no real need to do any detail work
here as no one will see it. I painted the interior a green color with black
instrument panel. The seats had leather painted on their facings. There is no
rear seats in this kit, just the ones in the front.

Once that was done, the transparencies were fit into place. No
real problems here, though I did have some trouble getting the windscreen to fit
properly when closing the fuselage halves. A bit of fiddling around got a decent
fit. I then assembled the wing halves and took care of the inevitable filler
requirements. Then I went to work on the fuselage. My Beaver was to be one of
the Ghana A.F. There was a nice profile in a back issue of Scale Aircraft
Modeling that I used as a reference. This Beaver had no upper fuselage windows
and only an ADF antenna on the roof so the the entire roof was sanded smooth
except for that one antenna. The upper windows were filled (several times) and
smoothed out as well. There is a carb intake scoop that fits on the right side
and that was glued on.

Once the fuselage was done, the landing gear was glued in place
and faired in where needed. Then the tailplanes and tail wheel was glued in
place after some cleanup. The engine was painted flat black and drybrushed, then
glued into the cowling and that glued onto the fuselage.

Next the windows were all masked. Next step was to glue the
wings on and to temporarily install the wing struts to ensure that all fit well.
The fit of the wings wasn't bad, but some filler was needed on the top. Then it
was off to the paint shop.

PAINT
& DECALS

This aircraft was mostly yellow with a white upper fuselage and
a red cheat line. Painting took a bit of thought. First, the entire aircraft was
painted gloss white. Several coats were needed to get good coverage. After
drying, a lot of masking was done for the upper surface of the aircraft. The
appropriate location of the cheat line was figured out and the airframe was then
painted yellow. I used Model Master enamels for these colors. A white undercoat
is imperative for the red and yellow colors. During the masking process, I made
sure that the cowling lip was masked off to accept the red. This lip and the
spinner were then painted in red, again using Model Master enamels.

The cheat line was made using solid red decal sheet trimmed to
the right shape. I chose the red for the cowling based on what matched the decal
sheet. While not perfect, it does match up rather well. This red decal was laid
just atop the yellow section to make sure there was white behind it so there
would be no color changes.

The decals were gleaned from a number
of places. The numbers were from various Modeldecal sheets as Ghana uses RAF
code styles. The roundels themselves came from several sheets that were at one
time on the market. These offered dots, circles, stars and other geometric
designs in several colors and sizes on each sheet. They are long out of
business, but I still find their sheet quite useful from time to time.

Once
the painting and decaling was done, the wheels were added and other detail
painting done to the kit.

CONCLUSIONS

This really is a nice kit, while not exactly a new kit anymore
and it does have weak wheel/landing gear attachment points ( I have broken the
wheels off a number of times), it does make into a very nice model. Hobbycraft
have since come out with this aircraft in both 1/72 and 1/48 scale, however, I
am not sure if they are any real improvement over this one. Recommended to all
skill levels, even though beginners will probably make a mess of it!

1998

Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet!

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